Böcker av James Munves

A new American novel-about an ornothologist, a physicist, and a rabbi-that takes us deep into the heart of the Colombian Andes. In Andes Rising the reader is confronted with a mystery. What happened to Thomas Cooper? A scientist who had worked on the Manhattan Project and attended the disarmament conference following World War II, he had quit his job, left his family, and gone off to Colombia, South America, on an ornothological project undertaken by the Peace Corps. His family and friends have lost all trace of him. Finally his mother persuades her rabbi to go down to Colombia and find out if Thomas is dead or alive. What the rabbi eventually finds is Thomas's journal filled with notes about his bird studies, ruminations about life (to which the rabbi sometimes responds), and pages from the work of Chapman, the early 20th-century ornothologist who collected specimens for the Museum of Natural History. Flashing through all is a rare tanager with turquoise markings. The director of the project wants Thomas to bring in specimens of this bird. "If what is being prepared is another extermination," Thomas writes, "I am not going to abet it by pushing another bird to extinction." But is he slowly going mad? Does he die in the avalanche, or is he somewhere among the birds of the Andes?

“[James Munves] has the gift of finding the particular detail that illuminates the whole. . . . The narrative comes out to be more than the sum of its parts.” —Emily Maxwell, The New Yorker “The struggle for independence, the creation of a new government, westward expansion, regional differences, Civil War, social and economic change, Depression and world wars—all described and related the one to another in a smooth and knowledgeable narrative.” —Nash K. Burger, The New York Times “The best short history that I have ever read.” —Thurman Arnold “A model volume of its kind . . . Deserves wide acceptance.” —Allan Nevins

On May 4, 1970, two platoons of Ohio National Guardsmen fired on a crowd of students at Kent State University, killing four and wounding nine. Neither the federal government nor the state of Ohio took any responsibility for the guardsmen’s actions. Through the account of the subsequent civil trial, we follow the events of that tragic day, as experienced by the victims and their families, and share their frustration as they try to discover the truth.